Recap: 'Fringe' - 'The Last Sam Weiss'

Part of my problem with the Peter Prophecy lay less in the fact that it was romance trumping science at its core (though I had problems with aspects of it) and more to do with the fact that it left Olivia out of the equation. Peter ostensibly had to choose one version of Olivia or the other, which meant that neither version had much agency as far as this prophecy was written. It reminded me a bit of the mythology surrounding vampire slayers and their Watchers in the "Buffy" universe, an injustice/inequality ultimately built into that show’s end game. I don’t think "Fringe" has gender issues on the mind per say: it holds up both men and women equally strong and equally fallible. But by leaving Olivia out of the equation, it left moronic reviewers such as myself calling The Doomsday Device "the most dramatic rose ceremony ever."

Tonight’s episode changed that, and it did so by calling back to one of my favorite Season 1 scenes. That scene, from the episode "Ability," involved Olivia psychically turning off a bomb set by David Robert Jones, with Peter standing behind her while she did it. Speculation ran rampant about what actually happened in that scene: did she turn it off? Did he? Was in a combination? Or was it, as Olivia surmised at the time, simply a practical joke enacted by Jones? Tonight’s episode confirmed that the answer lay behind Door #3, through the discovery of a piece of last parchment and the discovery of inner strength found only when relying on someone you love. Read More...